Monday, June 22, 2015

Bang for Your Buck...Which Promo Sites Have the Driest Powder

There are a lot of sites out there for book promotion. Some are good, some...not so much. Below is one author's (me) experiences with a number of popular promo sites, number crunched and graphically displayed for your perusal.

METHODOLOGY

All promos were for a perma-free, fantasy/paranormal romance
novel with a professionally designed cover and over 125 reviews (now up to 190)
with a 4.3 star rating on Amazon.

All promotions were scheduled with at least three days
between the next promo to assure a truer evaluation of the benefit of each
site. Bang for your buck (BFYB) was calculated by dividing the number of
downloads on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Nook and Smashwords from the beginning of the promo out 72 hours by the cost
of the promotion . The larger the BFYB, the more cost effective
the promotion.

Promos were conducted between December 23, 2014 and June 17,
2015.

RESULTS

Table 1. Promo Site Results, Ranked by BFYB, Highest
to Lowest

Site

Cost (US$)

Downloads

Cost/Download

BFYB

BookBub

195.00

25423

0.007670

130.37

eReader News Today

30.00

993

0.030211

33.10

Lendle Book of the Day

35.00

1026

0.034113

29.31

Books Butterfly

28.00

755

0.037086

26.96

Free Booksy

100.00

2032

0.049213

20.32

Free Kindle Books

25.00

458

0.054585

18.32

eBooksoda

10.00

141

0.070922

14.10

BKnight (Fiverr)

15.75

205

0.076829

13.02

Kindle Book Review

20.00

258

0.077519

12.90

Digital Books Today

20.00

186

0.107527

9.30

Best Graphic (Fiverr)

5.50

47

0.117021

8.55

Book Sends

50.00

380

0.131579

7.60

eBookImpresario

5.00

38

0.131579

7.60

Book Kitty (Fiverr)

5.50

28

0.196429

5.09

New Free Kindle Books

5.00

20

0.250000

4.00

eBookasaurus

10.00

35

0.285714

3.50

Bindingsauthor (Fiverr)

5.50

12

0.458333

2.18

Indie Book of the Day

30.00

31

0.967742

1.03

Bookbear

20.00

12

1.666667

0.60

Figure 1.BFYB,
by Site (alphabetized)

So, what can one conclude from all this? The statistically sound way to get a good idea of a site's worth would be to gather this information from lots of authors to establish a mean BFYB with standard deviations. My data does not have that, but I think it gives a good picture of what one might expect. Not surprisingly, the Bub was da bomb. Beyond that, there are a number of sites that had good numbers, and some were definite duds. Remember, the results are likely genre-specific, and subject to the vagaries of the cosmic karma that influences indie book sales (e.g., phases of the moon, placement on the site's page or day of the promotion).

About Me

Scientist by day, paranormal romance-urban fantasy author by night,
M.L. Ryan is a professional woman -- which is not to say that she gave up her amateur status, but rather that she is over-educated with a job that reflects her one-time reluctance to leave school and get "real" work -- and she spends a lot of time in that profession reading highly technical and dry material. In an attempt to strengthen the other side of her brain, She decided to write some of the many stories rolling around in her head.
M.L. Ryan lives in Tucson, Arizona with her husband and teenage son, four cats, a Curly Coated Retriever and an adopted desert tortoise.